


Demons

by brightly_lit



Category: Supernatural
Genre: Addiction, Alternate Universe - Military, Angst, Gen, Metafiction, Military
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-04-19
Updated: 2014-04-19
Packaged: 2018-01-19 22:35:32
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,353
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1486621
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/brightly_lit/pseuds/brightly_lit
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Captain Sam Wesson and Sergeant Dean Smith have been fighting this war together for a decade ... but will their demons get them first?</p><p>Not a feel-good fic.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Demons

Sam Wesson knocked on the door of his friend Dean Smith’s apartment and heard Dean’s holler to come on in. He found Dean as he expected to find him: half-drunk in a t-shirt, in the middle of the afternoon.

“Officer,” Dean said, giving Sam a mock salute. Dean had outranked him once--four years older than Sam, he had in fact been the sergeant who gave him most of his training. He had never quite gotten over it when Sam was promoted ahead of him. Sam tried to smile as he sat down on the bed across from Dean in his tiny military apartment on the base. Dean had been in the military so long, he didn’t feel comfortable sleeping anywhere that didn’t resemble a bunker.

“Dean,” Sam said. They were so close, had been through so much together, Sam never made Dean treat him as his superior. He had a terrible memory of Dean, battered beyond recognition on the battlefield, calling his name. In that moment, when death was so close, Dean forgot about rank. Everything else fell away until they were just two men--boys, practically--about to die. From that day forward, Dean had been like a brother to Sam. More than a brother. He was the one who gave the order to the soldiers who freed him when he was a prisoner of war, trapped in a cage for over a year. Sam owed Dean his life many times over. He would never pull rank on him, not ever.

That didn’t stop him from hoping his position might assist him in talking Dean into coming with him on the next tour of duty. Much discussion had taken place behind closed doors as to what to do with Sergeant Smith: alcoholic, a loose cannon, some claimed he’d come to like killing too much in his last long assignment in a hellish desert wasteland colloquially referred to by all the soldiers as ‘Purgatory.’ He’d come close to being honorably discharged, but Sam fought hard to keep him--not because he thought fighting in the war was good for him. Just that Dean didn’t know how to do anything else. Sam was afraid of what would happen to him if he no longer even had that to hold onto.

Dean’s parents were long dead. He’d once had a family of sorts--a good woman. He treated her boy like he was his own. It had all fallen apart. Sam wasn’t sure what had happened. Dean claimed she couldn’t accept that he couldn’t be there all the time when he was called on to do another tour of duty, but Sam suspected Dean was the one who had given up on their little family, on himself. Dean had sacrificed everything for this war. They couldn’t give him a medal and a handshake and send him on his way. It would kill him. He was barely holding it together as it was.

Sam had managed to arrange an easy tour, about as safe as they came. If Dean came along, Sam hoped it would give him purpose, direction, hope. If nothing else, it would prevent him from drinking his days away. Sam gently pried the bottle of Crowley from Dean’s hands and set it on his bedside table. Dean scowled at him, but didn’t argue. What could he say?

“I’m shipping out again next month. Can I count on you?”

Dean squinted. “Are you headed to Abaddon?”

Sam sighed. He meant Abu Dhabi, but Dean had never been able to pronounce it, so he instead called it ‘Abaddon.’ Something had happened to Dean there--Sam didn’t know what; Dean’s report made no sense. Whatever it was, suddenly Dean had decided it was personal. All he could think about was defeating the threat he perceived. Trouble was, once he did, he’d just find himself a new threat to worry and obsess over. “No, Dean,” he said gently. “We’re trying to win this war, so we can hang it up, for good. You and me, and all our buddies.” The few left alive. “Finish this thing and live a happy life.”

“There’ll always be evil in the world,” Dean grunted. He’d said this as long as Sam could remember, even back before the war when Dean still thought war and guns were cool, when Sam was just a fresh recruit, barely 18. “There’ll always be monsters that need killin’. I’ll always have a job.”

This was not true--he might not have this job much longer, anyway--but Sam didn’t have the heart to tell him so. “There may always be monsters,” he said gently, “but it’s not always going to be up to you to save everyone else.” Dean shook his head, negating these words he didn’t want to hear, and went to wash his face. “Dean ... what do you think will happen to this world when you’re gone?”

Dean gave him a thin, unfelt smile. “I’ll never be gone. Ten tours in ten years and I’m still alive! I’m invincible, Sam, I told you. A superhero.”

“Yeah, I thought I was a superhero once,” Sam muttered. There wasn’t much Sam could say about Dean’s alcoholism, considering it was only five years ago when Sam himself was an addict, a drug known on the street as ‘Ruby.’ Dean had berated and belittled and beaten him out of his addiction, but Sam still remembered what it was like, how everything had seemed so clear. He’d been just like Dean: eager to complete his assignment and kill the bad guy--or in this case, bad girl--so eager, he didn’t pay attention when his orders changed. He killed her anyway and all hell broke loose. They still felt the consequences of Sam’s rash actions even now ... which was partly why he was so keen to get Dean to see past his demons and get back on a better path. Yeah, that was partly why, but it was mostly because he needed Dean. He needed his friend to be okay. Truth was, Sam didn’t know what he’d do without him, either.

“Get Cas,” grunted Dean. “He’s been a better soldier than me from day one.”

“I want to bring you both. Cas wants you to come.”

Cas, special ops, the guy who saved Sam from the box, who was with Dean in Purgatory, from whom Sam had learned what little he’d learned of that tour. He’d saved Dean when he was a prisoner of war before that. That’s how they met. He was practically a brother to them, too. Pure-hearted and innocent, his fellow soldiers teasingly called him ‘Gump.’ “What do you need me for if you’ve got him?” Dean growled.

“He’s really not much better at following orders than you are,” Sam sighed.

“Right, Captain, so why do you want us there? We’re no angels.”

“Sometimes that’s exactly what I need. Someone who, uh, isn’t going to follow all the rules, if ... that’s what’s required.”

That piqued Dean’s interest. A hint of his old roguish smile appeared. “Yeah? That I can do.”

Sam smiled a little, too. “Yeah, you’ll do my dirty work?”

“Is there any other kind?”

Sam grinned. He could tell Dean would follow him now, anywhere he went. He got up. “Good,” he said, but his smile faded when Dean beelined for his bottle again. “But Dean ... I know you and I see a lot of it, but there’s not just evil in the world. There’s good, too. If there’s devils, there must also be angels.”

“I’m sure they’re dicks, too--like you, coming around sitting on my shoulder and giving me a hard time about my choices. It’s my life.” He brandished his bottle at him.

“Pretty sure the day we enlisted, that stopped being true,” Sam muttered. Perversely, Dean grinned at him.

“Least we’re in it together,” said Dean, looking almost like his old self there for a second. Sacrificing himself to save someone else was the only thing that gave Dean’s life meaning. Well, Sam could relate to that. Sam grinned back with a nod, and showed himself out.

 

~ The End ~


End file.
